this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
92 points (86.5% liked)
Memes
45661 readers
997 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
TL;DR: yes, no, wrong
TL:
As far as I know, singular they (/them) as a personal pronoun, not for when the gender is unknown, is only common in two places: the UK and the internet. It's only formally taught in the UK.
I'd claim that the 'nobody' is categorically incorrect here. Most people who learned English as a first or second language outside the UK and/or more than ~30 years ago were tought about gender neutral 'he' and not 'they'. I know that I only learned about 'they' as a personal pronoun in the last decade or so on the internet.
It's been a while since I read about it because I was so baffled that the young ones on the internet were unable to distinguish singular and plural pronouns, until it dawned on me that there was a pattern and that I needed to do some research and learning. So, from the top of my head, hence the numbers could be off:
The first verifiable use of singular they for when the gender is unknown was in a novel some 100 years ago. The concept of 'they' as a personal pronoun was only developed in the latter half of the last century in the UK and has only been formally taught there for about three decades.
As far as I know, all guides to formal writing outside the UK discourage the use of singular they even for when the gender is unknown (not to mention the much younger use as a personal pronoun).
Now, I'm not a native speaker and my information might not be up to date. I'm curious to hear from people from the US, Australia, NZ, India, ... (wherever English is the first or a formal language) if and when they were taught about 'they' as a singular pronoun for when the gender is unknown and 'they' as a personal pronoun.
As a side note/some personal opinion:
As a non-native-speaker who was taught about gender neutral 'he', seeing people use 'they' as a singular pronoun was hell of confusing at first. I mostly got used to it, but I don't really like it. Sometimes I still find texts where I find it very confusing. A recipe for disaster is writing about a group and one individual of that group by referring to them (the individual) as 'they'. Such constructs will have me constantly go back and reread sentences wondering whether something refers to the group or the individual.
I think I would prefer two new sets of pronouns: one for when the gender is unknown, and another as personal pronouns other than he/she. It would make things much less ambiguous and easier (at least for me, I think).
I'm from the UK and I was definitely taught to use the genderless he in formal writing, I remember my teacher commenting on how sexist it was.
Also, no idea where you got the idea that the singular they is only a hundred years old, Oxford puts the earliest use of it to the fifteenth century.
I don't know if French still does it that way, but in high school French class we were taught to use il (he) for gender neutral. Basically everyone (English native class) thought it was super sexist. The teacher basically explained it as "languages are all really old so they retain a lot of obsolete ideals." IMO that's not really an excuse for keeping those obsolete parts.
Shakespeare used the singular they in his works. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.html
One could also think of they as that new pronoun. A lot of languages reuse sounds (including English) even in fairly common grammar components so one could think of this as a new word with a familiar sound assigned to it.
That was an interesting read. I think you "over-quoted" me here. Only the first sentence is about singular they for when the gender is unknown. I can't remember where I picked up the thing with the ~100 year old novel. I read it somewhere. But that might have been specific to use of singular they in the US or something. And I might misremember the number entirely. What's really fascinating is that Shakespeare even uses 'they' when the gender is known. I wonder, though, whether that allows for any inference on how people spoke back then? After all, it's prose for the theatre and Shakespeare is credited with inventing a lot of new language, not all of which would have stuck (I'd assume).
You're right of course. Though, that adds another meaning to an existing word and hence increases the ambiguity I mentioned. I know it's common among all natural languages (that I know of) to have multiple context-dependant meanings for some words. The computer scientist in me, that prefers interacting with compilers over humans, finds that revolting ;-)
Let's party in party of the party. (celebrate, in company of, political organization)
For me, a native speaker, I've been confused maybe twice by the use of singular they, and all it took was a quick clarification to remedy. This is because it seems pretty rare in English to use a pronoun without some context surrounding it.
If someone came to me and said, "they went to the store" my confusion would be due to a lack of context. Who are we even talking about in the first place? In that scenario gender neutral he, which is confusing for a myriad of other reasons and can lead to false assumptions, would be just as confusing.
However in an exchange like, "where did this person go? They went to the store" or, "where did Alex and Bob go? They went to the store" the context provides whether they is singular or plural. Revisiting the first example with zero context, "they" would normally be replaced by a proper noun. This sets the required context and makes future uses of "they" make perfect sense.
Whereas with gender neutral he I'd assume you knew the gender of who you were referring to. I grew up using they in the singular form constantly, and it's not like I was surrounded by queer culture, it's just a function of how English is spoken in some places even outside of the UK (I'm from California).
I can definitely see it being confusing though if you were taught "proper" formal English. No one I've ever encountered speaks that way and it's largely reserved for academic works. Hell, should'nt've and wheredya might as well be in the dictionary by now.